Aang

• 1. Introduction

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  Aang is twelve years old by the count of his body and 112 by the count of the calendar. That gap is the first strange fact about the hero of Nickelodeon's animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Two young people named Katara and Sokka find him frozen in an iceberg, and he wakes unaware of everything that happened while he slept. He is a monk who hates violence, yet he is also the one person expected to keep the Four Nations at peace. How does a boy with that temperament end a war? Where did the character come from in the first place? And what became of him, and of the people who loved him, long after the series ended?

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• 2. A Drawing and a Documentary

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  The first version of Aang was a balding man in his forties. Bryan Konietzko sketched him in a futuristic outfit with an arrow design on his head, and he modeled the face on his collaborator Michael Dante DiMartino. Konietzko later reworked that figure into a child with a flying bison. DiMartino, meanwhile, had been fascinated by a documentary about explorers trapped at the South Pole. The two ideas merged, and the creators summed up the result in one line: "There's an air guy along with these water people trapped in a snowy wasteland...and maybe some fire people are pressing down on them..." That sentence maps neatly onto the first two episodes, in which Katara and Sokka rescue Aang while Zuko and Fire Nation troops press down on the Southern Water Tribe.

  The early plan was far stranger. Aang was supposed to stay frozen for one thousand years and wake in a futuristic world, with a robot named Momo and a dozen flying bison. The creators lost interest in that science fiction setting and moved to an Asian-inspired fantasy world. The thousand years shrank to a century. His shaved head was explained by a culture modeled on Buddhist monks. The robot became a winged lemur, and the herd of bison became a single animal.

  The look of the show owed a debt to anime, especially the series FLCL, also known as Fooly Cooly. Director Giancarlo Volpe has said his staff were all ordered to buy FLCL and watch every single episode. The official art book states that Aang's design was based on that series' protagonist, Naota Nandaba. Fans and commentators have pointed to a strong physical resemblance and to a shared struggle with childhood trauma and with taking on great power too young. In the episode "Tales of Ba Sing Se," Aang's name appears in Chinese characters as 安昂, read ān áng.

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• 3. Raised at the Temple

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  Monk Gyatso, a senior monk at the Southern Air Temple, raised Aang after the previous Avatar, Roku, died and was reincarnated. Gyatso had been a friend of Roku. Even before anyone told Aang what he was, he stood out. He invented a new technique and became one of the youngest Airbending Masters in history.

  Tradition said an Avatar learns the truth at the age of 16. The senior monks broke that custom by four years, because Fire Lord Sozin was growing more hostile toward the other nations. They also planned to move Aang to a different Air Temple. When he learned he would be separated from Gyatso, Aang fled on his flying bison, Appa. A storm caught them. The life-or-death moment triggered the Avatar State, which sealed boy and bison inside an air pocket among icebergs for a full century.

  Gyatso had crept into Aang's bedroom late that night to tell him the move to the Eastern Air Temple was cancelled. It was already too late.

  The news waiting for Aang after he woke was worse. At the Southern Air Temple he met a winged lemur that he later named Momo. There he also learned that the Fire Nation had wiped out his people, Gyatso included. The discovery pushed him into the Avatar State again, and that outburst told the other nations the Avatar had returned.

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• 4. Elements and Martial Arts

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  The creators consulted a professional martial artist while designing the fighting in the series. Each of the four bending arts follows the philosophy and set movements of a real style, and each stands for a different idea.

  Airbending, Aang's native art, is a Southern Temple Style based on Baguazhang, an internal Chinese martial art. It favors circular movement and has few finishing moves, which reflects the unpredictability of wind and the peaceful character of the Airbenders. Aang is the only person in living memory to have mastered this form, and every other airbending style has been lost to history. Opponents often exploit its lack of finishing moves.

  Waterbending, taught to Aang first by Katara and later by Pakku, draws on tai chi and Jeet Kune Do. It represents change and rewards softness, breathing and adaptability over hard aggression. Earthbending, taught by Toph, draws on Hung Ga and Southern Praying Mantis. It represents substance, and it demands patience, since an earthbender endures attacks until the right moment to strike. Its weakness is contact. Separate an earthbender from the ground and the art becomes ineffective.

  Firebending, taught by Zuko, draws on changquan, Shaolin kung fu, Southern Dragon kung fu and xingyiquan. It represents power. Unlike the other arts, it creates its element, as firebenders convert the energy of their breath into flame. The trade-off is a shortage of blocks and evasive moves.

  Bending also shaped the world around it. The city of Omashu moves supplies with a system of gravity and earthbending. The Water Tribes became a naval superpower and built ice structures with waterbent walls and gates. Airbender temples stood on high mountains that only airbending could easily reach, and the monks' hermetic outlook matched that isolation. The Fire Nation industrialized first, because fire and lightning gave it power and mastery of metalwork.

  Above all four arts stands the Avatar State, which links the Material World to the Spirit World. In it, Aang receives a huge boost of raw power from cosmic energy and can easily overwhelm any opponent who confronts him head-on. He can also use techniques that only his past lives ever learned. There is one catch: if he were killed in this state, the Avatar would stop being reincarnated and the Avatar Cycle would end. That danger explains why one blocked chakra mattered so much to his training.

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• 5. Teachers on the Road

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  Katara became Aang's first waterbending teacher after he promised to learn from her. In the Northern Water Tribe he also became an apprentice of Master Pakku, beside her. When Admiral Zhao led a Fire Nation invasion there, the tribe drove it off. Along the way Aang met Roku, who warned him that he must master all four arts and end the war before Sozin's Comet arrived at the end of summer.

  Earthbending proved harder. A vision in a swamp showed Aang a blind earthbender and told him to find her, and she turned out to be Toph Beifong. Her rigid art clashed with his love of freedom, so he struggled with it. Princess Azula, with her friends Mai and Ty Lee, kept chasing the group. At Ba Sing Se they found the city claimed to be perfect while its people knew nothing of the world war. Aang also lost Appa to Sandbenders, who sold him, and the hunt for the bison led the group into the Dai Li and their leader's deception.

  The seven chakras came next. A guru tried to teach Aang to open them so he could control the Avatar State. When Aang sensed that Katara was in danger, he left before the seventh chakra was cleared, and the block returned. Later in the Crystal Catacombs, Azula struck him with lightning, a blow that killed him. Katara brought him back with spirit water from the Northern Water Tribe.

  Book Three began with Aang waking up with a little hair and unable to use the Avatar State. He agreed to let everyone think he had died, while his remaining allies attacked the Fire Nation capital. Azula thwarted them. Then Zuko had a change of heart, rebelled against his father and offered to teach Aang firebending. The two sought the art in its purest form and rediscovered Dancing Dragon Style from the last two dragons.

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• 6. The Choice Against Killing

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  In the episode "The Spirit World (Winter Solstice, Part 1)," an angry spirit destroys a village and kidnaps villagers. Aang does not fight it. He negotiates. The writers gave him that reluctance on purpose, and DiMartino said they wanted Aang to solve problems and defeat enemies with his wits as well as his powerful abilities. According to the creators, "Buddhism and Taoism have been huge inspirations behind the idea for Avatar." His vegetarian diet, shown in "The King of Omashu" and "The Headband," fits that background, since the Brahmajala Sutra, a Buddhist code of ethics, encourages vegetarianism.

  The principle faced its hardest test in the finale. Aang lost his temper when his friends joked about killing Ozai, and he ran off to a strange island. His four past lives, Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk and Yangchen, argued that killing Ozai was the only way. Then Aang learned the island was the back of a Lion Turtle, one of four that made the first benders by manipulating the chi of humans. The Lion Turtle gave him Energybending.

  In the last battle, Aang refused to give up his attachment to Katara, because he valued his love for her above his duty to the world. Ozai hurled him against a rock that pressed on his scar. That blow opened the seventh chakra and let him master the Avatar State by accident. Yet Aang stopped before the final strike. He used Energybending to strip Ozai of his firebending, which ended the Hundred Year War. Zuko became the new Fire Lord, and the series closed at Iroh's tea shop in Ba Sing Se, where Aang and Katara shared a kiss.

  The writers once planned something different. Aang was meant to let go of his attachment to Katara to unlock new airbending abilities. They dropped that idea, and later gave it to a character named Zaheer.

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• 7. After the War

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  The graphic novels pick up in the peace that followed. Aang joins the Harmony Restoration Movement, which aims to remove Fire Nation remnants from the Earth Kingdom. At Zuko's own request, Aang agrees to end Zuko's life should he ever follow a path like his father's. A fan club becomes the Air Acolytes, a group Aang intends to teach the ways of the Air Nomads. He helps search for Zuko's mother Ursa and finds her. He enters the Spirit World to convince the Mother of Faces to give a boy named Rafa a new face. He stops Azula, disguised as the Kemurikage, from stealing more children. At the end he returns to the South Pole for the festival of the rebuilt Southern Water Tribe, and reunites with Katara and Sokka.

  In The Legend of Korra, Aang's story ends in 153 AG. The Avatar State had drained much of his life energy while he was frozen, and he did not feel it for decades. In his 50s the strain began to wear on him, and he died at 166 by the calendar, or 66 by his body. Katara and his three children outlived him. He never met his grandchildren, all of whom became powerful airbenders. Near the end, he asked the Order of the White Lotus to find and guide the next Avatar, who was born as Korra of the Southern Water Tribe. Aang meant the Order simply to guide and guard her. After several mishaps, including a kidnapping attempt by the anarchist Zaheer, Katara and Tenzin kept Korra in a compound at the South Pole.

  In that series, voiced by D.B. Sweeney, Aang returns as a spirit advisor to the seventeen-year-old Korra, much as Roku once advised him. After she loses her bending, he helps her recover by triggering the Avatar State and teaching her Energybending. The second season complicates his legacy. Kya and Bumi say that Aang always took Tenzin on vacations, never them, and the Air Acolytes did not even know about his other two children. Tenzin insists his father loved them all equally. When Vaatu kills Raava inside Korra, her link to Aang and the past Avatars seems severed for good. In the third season she wishes to ask his advice, and the spirit of Iroh points her toward Aang's close friend, Lord Zuko.

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• 8. Beyond the Screen

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  The voice of Aang in the original series belongs to Zach Tyler Eisen, and the character soon spread into other media. He appears on many cards in the Avatar: The Last Airbender Trading Card Game. He is one of four playable characters in the first video game, which led to two sequels, The Burning Earth and Into the Inferno. An online game on Nickelodeon's website, Escape from the Spirit World, changes some plot details, yet DiMartino and Konietzko say its events are canon. Aang is also playable in Nicktoons Nitro, Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix and the Nickelodeon Super Brawl series, including All-Star Brawl and its sequel. He arrived in Fortnite as a skin on the 12th of April 2024. Tokyopop published a cine-manga of the films, in which Aang appears throughout.

  In 2010 director M. Night Shyamalan cast Noah Ringer, a 12-year-old Tae Kwon Do practitioner, in the film The Last Airbender. The film pronounces the name as ɑŋ rather than eəŋ. The casting of a presumed white actor, within a mostly Caucasian cast in an Asian-influenced universe, drew accusations of racism, a letter-writing campaign and a protest outside a casting call for extras in Philadelphia. Several critics also received it poorly, saying the original casting call favored Caucasian actors. Ringer later told Entertainment Weekly that he is American Indian. Gordon Cormier plays Aang in the Netflix live-action adaptation.

  Critics and fans have generally praised the character. Kendall Lyons wrote that Aang seems to be "the lighthearted kid that you can easily familiarize yourself with." One review observed that as the Avatar he seems unstoppable, but as Aang he is just another Airbender, which lets the show present flaws rather than a perfect hero. In 2016 Screen Rant ranked him number 15 on its list of the 30 best animated television characters of all time. At the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, Dutch windsurfer Kiran Badloe won gold in Men's RS:X with a blue arrow haircut inspired by Aang's design.

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